The lobby of the Fox Cities Performing Arts Center in downtown Appleton bustles with activity during a 10-year anniversary open house held in August. / Wm. Glasheen/The Post-Crescent

When John Bergstrom walks through the doors of the Fox Cities Performing Arts Center in downtown Appleton, he feels as excited and enthusiastic about being there as he did 10 years ago, when the PAC first opened.

However, it’s not only the Broadway blockbuster touring productions that bring Bergstrom through the PAC’s doors.

Bergstrom, a founding member of the PAC’s board of directors, has attended ThedaCare’s P.A.R.T.Y. (Prevent Alcohol and Risk Related Trauma in Youth) at the PAC maybe six or seven times, and he always notices the impact of that event on the teenagers who are the target audience.

After the annual event — a reality-based education program that shows the consequences of making poor choices while driving, and encourages good choices — Bergstrom has noticed youth waiting quietly outside, reflecting on the experience. Some were tearful.

“Every time I go, I say to myself, we should have built this facility to do this if nothing else, to get all these kids, put them in one room and give them a demonstration of how important these choices are that they make in those teenage years,” said Bergstrom, chairman of Bergstrom Automotive. “It’s more than a musical place or a Broadway play place. It’s a community gathering spot where we can communicate with people. It’s the furthest thing from some kind of an elitist facility. It’s a community asset. It’s far exceeded any expectation that I ever had.”

In its first decade, the PAC on College Avenue has welcomed to its stage many Broadway blockbuster touring shows. Some of the productions, including “Wicked” and Disney’s “The Lion King,” were Wisconsin premiere engagements.

Regional and community-based events, from Fox Valley Symphony concerts to high school proms, also have taken place there.

Above and beyond

Community leaders who played key roles in the creation of the PAC, and now continue to serve on its board of directors, say that their dreams for the PAC have been more than realized. The PAC, they say, has come to mean to the community so much more than they ever expected it would.

(Page 2 of 4)

“The community has taken on the ownership of the facility in so many ways,” said retired Kimberly-Clark Corp. executive Kathi Seifert, a past chairman of the PAC’s board. “It really has exceeded our expectations. I don’t think we realized when we undertook the journey that the Fox Cities Performing Arts Center would not only transform the downtown area of Appleton, but also be such an icon for the entire Fox Cities as well.”

Walt Rugland, a founding PAC board member who now serves as the board’s secretary and treasurer, says the PAC’s founders continue to reflect on the numbers of people and organizations that contributed to the establishment of the PAC in some way.

“From the beginning, we said, this needs to be a community effort,” said Rugland, a retired executive of Thrivent Financial for Lutherans.

A strong foundation

In 1999, Thrivent Financial for Lutherans pledged $8 million to launch the PAC project, which had been a subject of community discussion for decades. That gift celebrated Thrivent Financial for Lutherans’ (formerly Aid Association for Lutherans) centennial.

The City of Appleton and the Appleton Redevelopment Authority in 2000 allocated $4.2 million to acquire and prepare the site for construction. The Boldt Co. broke ground on the theater that same year, with architecture by Zeidler Roberts Partnership.

“We were blessed with a very creative architectural design,” said O.C. Boldt, one of the PAC’s founding board members and the chairman of the Boldt Co. “And now, after 10 years, there is almost nothing that we would change from the original design. The architect designed a building that everybody raves about. ... I don’t think at the time we fully realized what (the PAC) could do for the community and how it would change the social life. ... It’s just way beyond what we ever envisioned.”

More than 2,700 donors — including individuals, families, businesses, municipalities and foundations — offered pledges totaling $45 million to the PAC’s capital campaign within three years’ time.

(Page 3 of 4)

“You have an immediate investment from the community, and you want to return on that investment as soon as you possibly can,” said PAC president Susan Stockton, who stepped into her position in September 2003, almost a year after the PAC’s doors opened in November 2002.

“I took very strongly the mission and vision that was set forth for the PAC by the founding board of directors because I found it to be a very exciting mission and vision, and one that would really encourage participation by the entire community,” Stockton said. “We were very careful in the early days to establish programming that was going to engage a broad cross-section of our community.”

Stockton said the PAC’s founding board of directors conducted research and honored the community’s feedback when constructing the PAC’s personality profile.

“From my perspective, I think they really hit a bullseye,” Stockton said. “From day one, we had very high operating numbers. To get to a decade of operation this month and to have earned the number 10 spot nationwide for venues our size for being one of the top stops of the decade is huge. It says the mission and vision was tailored perfectly to the community in which we reside.”

Audiences have played their part well in helping the PAC to attract quality performers and productions, Stockton said.

“Our ability to provide world-class entertainment is in direct proportion to the audiences’ enthusiasm,” Stockton said. “If the audience was not enthusiastic in buying tickets, the producers would never want to put their shows here. Because we have an enthusiastic ticket-buying audience, that enables us to provide this world-class entertainment, because people know they’re going to be able to do good business in the Fox Cities.”

A teaching moment

One of the PAC’s primary goals at its inception was to become an education destination for patrons of all ages, including to entire classrooms of students through a daytime education series that features live performances, Seifert said.

(Page 4 of 4)

“What has been incredible is how it also has been an educational opportunity for students from throughout northeastern Wisconsin,” Seifert said. “That has just been an incredible surprise and opportunity for the center, to be able to reach out to so many young people.”

As the PAC looks forward to its next decade, it is including endowment fundraising in its plans. The PAC has spread out the quiet phase of its endowment campaign, the Keystone Campaign, over the past couple years. It now is launching a new and public phase of the Keystone Campaign.

Raising endowment funds separately from the PAC’s seed money has turned out to be the right course of action, Rugland said.

“I think we’re approaching it the right way,” Rugland said. “Ten years ago, when we went and asked corporations and individuals to contribute to this (establishment of the PAC), this was a new level of philanthropy for most people. We were very careful with what we did with their funds, and we have been very careful with how we have maintained the facility. It still looks like new, you know.”